6. “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep,” in A Further Range (New York: Holt, 1936).
7. “Things I Consider Overrated,” in From the Uncollected Edmund Wilson (Ohio University Press, 1995), pp. 120–21. Wilson ends his diatribe with the observation that sea literature is unreadable. Well before him, Théophile Gautier made the same point, with much more wit (see my anthology, Vol. 1, pp. 501–3). Americans often consider Wilson as a prince of modern criticism; he seems to me a rather vulgar mind.
8. Boswell, Life of Johnson (entry of March 1759). And again: “A ship is worse than a gaol. There is, in a gaol, better air, better company, better conveniency of every kind; and a ship has the additional disadvantage of being in danger. When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land” (Boswell, Life of Johnson, entry of 19 March 1776). And this conversation between Johnson, Boswell and William Scott (entry of 10 April 1778):
Johnson: As to the sailor, when you look down from the quarter deck to the space below, you see the utmost extremity in human misery; such crowding, such filth, such stench!
Boswell: Yet sailors are happy.
Johnson: They are happy as brutes are happy, with a piece of fresh meat, — with the grossest sensuality…
Scott: We find people fond of being sailors.
Johnson: I cannot account for that, any more than I can account for other strange perversions of the imagination.
9. Johnson was a landlubber to an almost Continental degree. He was from Lichfield, one of the very few English cities that are located more than 100 miles from the nearest shore. Though he became a Londoner quite early in his career, it is only at age fifty-nine that he saw the sea for the first time in his life — during an excursion to Plymouth, on which he had been dragged by his old friend, the painter Joshua Reynolds.
10. Letter to Sidney Colvin, written from Tahiti, 16 October 1888. See Selected Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (Yale University Press, 1997), p. 382.
11. Éric Tabarly, Mémoires du large (Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1997), p. 126. Also in the same book, these lines of equally refreshing sincerity: “One often asks lone sailors what they think about when out at sea, and their answers are nearly always awkward. As for myself, I don’t think at all. Or rather, I only think of the boat; my ears are attuned to its every sound; my only concern is to make it sail as fast as possible. All the time, I only think of the boat, because on board the tasks are absorbing. Contrary to what most people believe, a boat is not synonymous with freedom. To sail means to accept constraints one has freely chosen. It is a privilege: most people must bear with the constraints which life is imposing on them.” (Ibid., p. 122.)
12. “I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by / And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking / And a grey mist on the sea’s face and a grey dawn breaking. / I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide / Is a wild call and a clear call that cannot be denied; / And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, / And the flung spray and the blown spume and the seagulls crying. / I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, / To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; / And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover, / And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.”
13. Quoted in David Hays and Daniel Hays, My Old Man and the Sea (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), p. 197.
14. Joseph Conrad, “The Torrens: A Personal Tribute,” in Last Essays (London & Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1926).
15. Joseph Conrad, “The Secret Sharer,” in ’Twixt Land and Sea (London & Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1912). Conrad repeatedly evoked this paradoxical feeling of security: “The peace of the sea… a sailor finds a deep feeling of security in the exercise of his calling. The exacting life of the sea has this advantage over the life of the earth, that its claims are simple and cannot be evaded.” Joseph Conrad, Chance (London: Methuen & Co., 1914), Chap. 1.
16. Hilaire Belloc, The Cruise of the “Nona” (London: Century Publishing, 1983), new edition with an introduction by Jonathan Raban. The original edition was published in 1925.
IN THE WAKE OF MAGELLAN
1. Deus escreve direto por linhas tortas.
INDEX
The links below refer to the page references of the printed edition of this book. While the numbers do not correspond to the page numbers or locations on an electronic reading device, they are retained as they can convey useful information regarding the position and amount of space devoted to an indexed entry. Because the size of a page varies in reflowable documents such as this e-book, it may be necessary to scroll down to find the referenced entry after following a link.
Abetz (Otto) 121
Adorno (T.W.) 501
Alain (E.A. Chartier) 516
Allégret (Marc) 129, 152–53
Allégret (Yves) 152
Allston (W.) 454
St. Ambrose 307, 553
Amiel (H.F.) 500
An Lushan 289
Aragon (Louis) 182, 221
Archilochus 241
Arendt (Hannah) 235
Arrant (R.) 414
Asselineau (Charles) 517
Auden (W.H.) 493
St. Augustine 165, 307, 492, 542
Austen (Jane) 144
Aymé (Marcel) 277
Bach (J.S.) 128, 348, 481, 534, 543
Badiou (A.) 416
Bail (M.) 354
Balboa (Vasco Nuñez de) 443
Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski) 500
Balzac (Honoré de) 7, 18, 61–70, 83–84, 143, 206, 234, 266, 482, 509, 515–16, 536, 551
Barenboim (D.) 557
Barthes (R.) 8, 245, 248, 375–78, 511, 558
Baudelaire (Charles) 61–62, 67, 69, 73–74, 78, 148, 228, 245, 249, 251, 258–59, 266, 434, 437, 475, 481, 517, 520, 535, 538
Beck (Beatrix) 117, 123, 132, 136, 139, 164, 525–26, 528, 531, 533, 541–42
Beckett (Samuel) 246
Beethoven 371, 495–96
Behan (Brendan) 487
Belloc (Hilaire) 192, 197, 203, 209, 269, 544, 562
Bellour (Raymond) 220
Bennett (Alan) 488
Bennett (Arnold) 536
Berenson (Bernard) 493
Bernanos (Georges) 209, 452, 531, 544
Bernard (Claude) 45
Bernard (Tristan) 170
Bertelé, René 217
Bertrand (A.) 515
Betjeman (John) 200
Biancai 552
Billeter (J.F.) 302, 305, 309–13, 358
Bizot (F.) 413
Blainey (G.) 48
Blake (William) 506
Blanche (Cynthia) 472
Blanche (J.-E.) 115
Bloom (H.) 497–99
Bloy (Léon) 190, 490
Blum (Léon) 116, 118, 526
Bole 44
Bombard (Alain) 433, 559
Boncenne (P.) 240
Borges (J.L.) 47, 109, 212, 293, 316, 473–74, 477, 479–80, 545, 551–52
Bossuet 143, 519
Boswell (James) 163, 172, 264, 308, 530, 553, 561
Bouillier (H.) 86–87, 522
Boyd (Brian) 22, 237, 513
Bo Yibo 400
Braque (G.) 313, 348
Bréchon (Robert) 218
Breton (A.) 520
Brodsky (Joseph) 74, 76, 501, 517–18, 522
Brontë (Emily) 255
Brooke (Rupert) 129
Brosse (Jacques) 545